Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    In Dark Places
    In Dark Places
    In Dark Places
    Ebook432 pages5 hours

    In Dark Places

    By Michael Prescott

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Dr. Robin Cameron explores the dark places of the mind, hoping to reform hardened criminals. For her, no one is beyond redemption. Still, she may have met her match in Justin Gray, a conscienceless serial killer with a taste for young girls. Girls like Robin's teenage daughter Megan – who, unknown to her mom, is venturing into some dark places of her own.

    "Packed with psychological complexity, truly demented characters and nonstop, unexpected plot twists …This dark, compulsive read messes with your mind and makes you love it."—Publishers Weekly

    Michael Prescott is the New York Times and USA Today best-selling author of more than 20 thrillers.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael Prescott
    Release dateApr 20, 2019
    ISBN9781386719113
    In Dark Places
    Author

    Michael Prescott

    Michael Prescott was born and raised in New Jersey and attended Wesleyan University, majoring in film studies. After college, he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as a screenwriter. In 1986 he sold his first novel, and has gone on to pen six thrillers under the name Brian Harper and ten books as Michael Prescott. He has sold more than one million print copies and is finding a large new audience through e-books. Fan-favorite character Abby Sinclair, the “stalker’s stalker” first introduced in The Shadow Hunter, has since appeared in three more books.

    Read more from Michael Prescott

    Related to In Dark Places

    Related ebooks

    Police Procedural For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      Angel Of Death

      Sep 17, 2021

      Angel Of Death
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Begin Again

      Jun 14, 2022

      My grandfather came to live with me. There was nowhere else for him to go. What had happened to all his children? Death, decay, exile—I hardly know. My own parents died of pain. But I must not be too gloomy, at the beginning, or you will leave me, an

      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      La Bohème

      Mar 1, 2022

      ON A SATURDAY or Sunday afternoon in the cold early months of 1988, I sat alone at a table for two in a Greenwich Village diner, twenty-four years old, hopelessly young, my notebook open in front of me. At the table next to mine were three people, al

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Freedom

      Aug 6, 2020

      Freedom
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Too BAD

      Aug 30, 2022

      Too BAD
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Happy Endings

      Sep 1, 2023

      Happy Endings
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Q + A

      Nov 28, 2022

      Q + A
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Philip Roth

      Jun 4, 2018

      Philip Roth
      25 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Six Dart Out

      Sep 10, 2023

      Marc figured the girl was a vegan. Her puke had overflowed the sink and run onto the floor—tomatoes and rice marinated in microbrew lager. He’d told Vegan Girl to slow down, but her friends had won the turning-21-peer-pressure battle. Admittedly, Mar

      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Righteous

      Jan 22, 2019

      Righteous
      8 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      A Hard Man To Forget

      Jan 8, 2024

      A Hard Man To Forget
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Festival

      Sep 15, 2018

      My husband, who loved festivals, who was a great fan of festivals, wanted to get to the square in time for the first band at eleven o’clock. From bed, the dog and I watched him dress. He tried on various T-shirts, declaring some of them too tight and

      13 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Park’n’ride

      Sep 1, 2022

      FIRST PLACE SHORT STORY Ian Gouge w rote his first story when he was five: an illustrated space adventure he can still visualise today. He has written ever since. He completed his first full-length work of fiction in the 1990s and wrote three books

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Take a Writer Like Him: My Complicated Love Affair with Kingsley Amis

      Aug 24, 2018

      1. As much as I may rack my brain, there are 15 minutes or so in the dark that I can’t account for and that I’ll never get back—15 minutes during which, I have to think, that creep’s hands were touching my body. It’s a weird thing to think about all

      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      My Best Friend

      Oct 1, 2020

      My Best Friend
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      ‘Want’: Featured Fiction from Lynn Steger Strong

      Jul 8, 2020

      The novel won praise from Kirkus, which called it "wise, unflinching, and compelling," and Vulture, which hailed it as "a defining novel of our age of left-behind families." The post ‘Want’: Featured Fiction from Lynn Steger Strong appeared first on

      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Echos

      Jan 10, 2019

      Before Corrine’s husband abandoned her in Berlin, he liked to say that her name reminded him of the word “corrupt.” But ending in a twist rather than a split. Her last name was the French word for “swimsuit” but he never mentioned that. This seemed s

      17 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Life After Death

      May 27, 2022

      Life After Death
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Monster

      Dec 1, 2022

      Monster
      7 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Last Waylon Party

      Jan 18, 2019

      The Last Waylon Party
      14 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      All Of Us Here

      Jun 4, 2020

      All Of Us Here
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Name A Song

      Oct 9, 2019

      Name A Song
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Empty NEST

      Oct 2, 2024

      Empty NEST
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      There Are Words for Everything

      Dec 1, 2024

      There Are Words for Everything
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The July War

      Sep 8, 2020

      In summer, our neighborhood quiets in phases. The quieting begins in May. Schools give their older kids, the seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, a month off to prepare for the baccalaureate exams. Following a ritual as old as our parents, the students

      21 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bordello

      Sep 10, 2024

      Content Disclosure: Mild Violence; Mild Language Often, as thirteen-year-old Nelson moseyed through the hallways of Oak Ridge Middle and Upper School, he wished he was living in the Old West. This was his first semester in regular school—his mother’s

      19 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for In Dark Places

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      In Dark Places - Michael Prescott

      IN DARK PLACES

      MICHAEL PRESCOTT

      Contents

      Epigraph

      Prologue

      1

      2

      3

      4

      5

      6

      7

      8

      9

      10

      11

      12

      13

      14

      15

      16

      17

      18

      19

      20

      21

      22

      23

      24

      25

      26

      27

      28

      29

      30

      31

      32

      33

      34

      35

      36

      37

      38

      39

      40

      41

      42

      43

      44

      45

      46

      47

      48

      49

      50

      51

      52

      53

      54

      55

      56

      57

      58

      59

      60

      From the author ...

      Author’s Note

      Books by Michael Prescott

      Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit,

      In dark places, in the deeps.

      —Psalm 88

      Prologue

      I know who you are.

      That thought beat inside her in time with the steady rhythm of her heart. That thought gripped her with hard, cold fingers and wouldn’t let go.

      I know who you are. I know who you are.

      At first she hadn’t known. She’d assumed he was just some random sicko. He would rape her and let her go. Or maybe he wanted money, a ransom. Her parents weren’t rich, but they lived the lifestyle of the wealthy, in a house they couldn’t afford, in an exclusive neighborhood that was too upscale for them. They were social climbers, joining country clubs and playing golf at charity events, acting like big shots, never letting on that they paid for their fun with a second mortgage and endless loans from both sides of the family.

      He might have mistaken image for reality. He might have thought she was rich. But she didn’t believe it. She’d thought rape was more likely. She knew she had a hot body, the kind that turned older guys on. She’d seen plenty of men in their thirties or even older stopping to check her out as she walked home from school. Once, a good-looking guy in a Mercedes convertible had tried to pick her up. She’d told him she wasn’t legal, and he’d said he hadn’t cared. She’d walked away, secretly pleased.

      So, yeah, it had seemed pretty likely that the creep who had her now was just another desperate, dirty old man. Except she wasn’t sure he was so old. In the glimpse she’d gotten, he hadn’t looked much older than Jason, her classmate Sasha’s boyfriend, who worked in an accounting firm and was twenty-five.

      If all he wanted to do was screw, she could handle it. She’d lost her virginity three years ago, when she was fourteen. She’d been with four boys since, five if she counted Nelson Samovar, who’d been so nervous he hadn’t been able to get off. Sex held no mysteries for her. She would let the creep do whatever he wanted. She just hoped he would use a condom. There were diseases to worry about.

      But he hadn’t raped her. And that was when she’d begun to get scared.

      If he didn’t want money, and he didn’t want sex …

      Then why had he snatched her off the street at gunpoint, hustling her into the back of his parked van? Why had he taped her wrists and ankles, sealed her mouth with a punctured tennis ball and more tape, driven her out of the city? Why had he left her alone in the rear of the van, long after the engine had stopped and the last daylight had faded behind the flower-patterned curtains over the windows?

      She didn’t pay much attention to the news—it was all so boring and stupid—but she knew about the other high school girls who’d disappeared in Los Angeles over the past year. None of them had come from her school or her neighborhood. There was no reason for her to connect those crimes with the driver of the van.

      But if it was the same guy …

      There had been four victims, or maybe five; she couldn’t remember. Two were still missing. The other two—or three, whatever—had been found. Their bodies, anyway, left in different places in the Mojave Desert. He had kidnapped them and killed them. She didn’t recall what method he’d used. A gun, she thought. Probably a gun.

      When the thought first occurred to her, she told herself it couldn’t be true. Then she admitted it was possible—but unlikely. It seemed to become more plausible as time passed and she lay on the van’s carpeted floor, twisting her ankles and wrists, chuffing against the gag. At some point, imperceptibly, it passed from being just an idea to a certainty.

      I know who you are.

      And what you’re going to do.

      Now the world outside the van was fully dark. Must be eight o’clock or later. Her parents would have reported her missing. The police would be looking for her. She might be mentioned on the news. She wondered when her friends would hear about it and what they would say. Were cell phones ringing all over Bel Air even now? Were Sasha and Taylor and Tabitha all relaying the scary news?

      Damn, she was afraid. Seventeen was way too young to be dead.

      She’d heard no noise from up front for hours. Had he forgotten she was even here? Maybe he was just crazy enough—

      The van creaked.

      She stiffened.

      Another creak as the vehicle shifted on its springs. The driver’s door opened with a soft snap. She heard a crunch of shoes alighting on sand or gravel.

      He was getting out of the front seat. After all this time sitting in silence, he was making his move.

      She twisted onto her side, flexing her wrists against the tape, her breath explosive in her nostrils.

      The van’s rear door swung open. She craned her neck and saw movement behind her, his shadowy form. Then he was on top of her, and for a moment she thought he really was a rapist, after all.

      But he made no move to assault her. He simply peeled the tape away from her mouth.

      Spit it out, he said.

      She coughed out the tennis ball and heard it drop on the floor. She kept coughing for a long time.

      What’s your name? he asked when she was through.

      Jessica. Jessica Bender.

      Bender. A chuckle. You a contortionist?

      She had heard every possible joke about her name, but here and now she couldn’t process humor. What?

      Never mind. How old are you, Jessie Bender?

      Seventeen.

      Nice-lookin’ piece of ass, ain’t you?

      She didn’t know how to answer that.

      Yeah, you’re a looker. His voice was oddly mellow and slow. Well, I’m real sorry I had to give you a scare. We’re heading home now.

      Home?

      Your home, I mean. I’m taking you back. Worked out an arrangement with your folks. Just business, is all.

      He leaned close when he spoke the last words. She smelled a strong medicinal odor. Liquor. He’d been drinking.

      Oh, she said.

      Get you back to beautiful Bel Air in no time. You’ll be bouncing on your daddy’s knee and hugging your favorite teddy bear.

      Something sharp glinted in the dark. She drew back.

      Don’t be a scaredy-cat, Jessie Bender, he said in that slowed-down voice. He cut through the tape around her ankles. How you supposed to walk if you’re all trussed up like a Christmas turkey? Now let’s get a move on.

      He stood and pulled her to her feet. She had the impression he was strong—strong enough to make any attempt at fighting back a futile exercise, even if her wrists hadn’t still been bound behind her back.

      Where are we going? she asked as he hoisted her out of the van.

      My car. Parked on the other side of the road. Can’t take the van. Boys in blue may be looking for it.

      Darkness lay all around, huge and silent under a starry sky. They were somewhere in the Mojave where the developers had not yet reached. The air was warm and dry, and as he led her forward, their shoes made soft scuffing noises on the hard-packed soil.

      What kind of arrangement? she asked.

      With your folks? Let’s just say your daddy owed some money to certain people, and I had to hold on to you until he decided to pay up.

      Oh.

      Like I said, business.

      Yes. She let a moment pass. So how come you didn’t know my name?

      They only tell me what I need to know.

      Uh-huh.

      It was a pretty good story, but there were two big holes in it. First, although her father liked to live above his means, he wasn’t stupid enough to get involved with the kind of people who would abduct his daughter and hold her as collateral. And second, she had been listening in the van the whole time. There had been no phone conversations, no radio transmissions. So how could any kind of deal have been arranged?

      There was no deal. There was no car parked on the other side of the road. There would be no trip back into town.

      I know who you are. I know who you are. I know who you are.

      I know who you are. She said it aloud.

      Beside her, the steady pace of his footfalls faltered. How’s that?

      You’re him. You’re the one who … who kills high school girls.

      He said nothing. They came to the road, a strip of blacktop bordered by yucca plants and spiny cactus. There was no traffic anywhere. No billboards, lampposts, buildings. She hadn’t known that any part of California could be so empty.

      That’s who you are, she pressed. Right?

      Right, he said.

      So it was confirmed. No doubt anymore.

      She lowered her head, afraid to speak.

      You’re smart, he said. Smarter than the others.

      She cleared her throat. The other five?

      Four. There’ve been four.

      I couldn’t remember. I’ll make five, then. She heard her voice from far away.

      You’ll make five, he agreed.

      She wondered if she could talk him out of it. Probably not. The others must have tried, but maybe they’d gotten all hysterical. She knew he wouldn’t respond to tears and screams. Logic might reach him. It was possible.

      You don’t really want to do this, she said as they crossed the road. If you did, you wouldn’t have to get drunk to go through with it.

      Is that so?

      You got drunk because part of you wants to let me go.

      He coughed up a dull chuckle. Yeah, right.

      I’m serious.

      You’re dead. He said it without emotion, as a statement of fact. You were dead the minute I grabbed you. You’re dead now. That’s not gonna change. Get used to it.

      They arrived at the other side of the road. She knew that nothing she said could touch him.

      He led her into the brush. A few yards from the road, he stopped walking. The flat desert extended in all directions under the moonless sky.

      She looked down and saw a gun in his hand. He must have had it tucked in the waistband of his pants. Some kind of handgun, small and shiny.

      He saw her staring at the gun, and he smiled. You scared, Jessie?

      She had been afraid for so many hours that she had almost stopped noticing.

      Yes.

      He lifted the gun. Close your eyes.

      She tried one more time. You don’t have to do this.

      Close your eyes.

      Can’t we talk about it?

      Close your eyes.

      I can do things for you. It was her last gambit, one that she knew was hopeless even before it was tried. I’m not a virgin. I can make you feel good.

      Close your eyes.

      Please.

      Close your eyes.

      Because there was nothing left for her to say or do, Jessica closed her eyes. And waited.

      She didn’t have to wait long.

      1

      Granola bars, Meg said without enthusiasm when she entered the kitchen, her blond hair freshly washed and pulled back with a purple scrunchie. I hope they’re not peanut butter again.

      Robin Cameron had sworn over and over that she would start serving her daughter nutritious breakfasts, but in the usual frantic effort to get Meg ready for school and get herself ready for work, she hadn’t seemed to find the time.

      We used up the peanut butter ones on Friday. Robin tried to sound upbeat. These are cookies ’n’ cream.

      Dessert for breakfast. Does this still count as the most important meal of the day?

      Never complain about getting your daily sugar fix. When you’re older, you’ll learn that the regular intake of highly sweetened snack foods is the key to happiness.

      That’s the slogan of the American Dental Association, isn’t it?

      If they know what’s good for business, it is. Look, granola bars aren’t any worse for you than those honey-frosted cocoa puffs, or whatever they were, that your dad used to buy for you in Santa Barbara. You practically lived on those.

      Meg looked up from smoothing the wrinkles out of her gray-and-white uniform. Mom, that was, like, a million years ago.

      That’s a bit of an exaggeration. I don’t think your father and I were actually married during the Ice Age.

      I don’t know. Things got pretty chilly.

      Robin couldn’t argue with that. The marriage had been failing for years before it was finally put out of its misery.

      Anyway, Meg added, sugar makes me break out.

      That’s a myth.

      It is?

      For the purposes of this conversation, yes. Robin placed two unwrapped granola bars on Meg’s plate. As a medical practitioner licensed in the state of California, I can assure you that millions of commuters subsist on this healthful and satisfying breakfast fare every day. They survive. So will you.

      I wish I could believe that, Meg said, but she ate the bars. How about you? she asked through a mouthful of oats. Aren’t you going to savor the joys of your own cooking? By the way, mentally, I put ‘cooking’ in quotes.

      Thanks for sharing that. I’ll eat mine at the office.

      You’ll probably stop at some gourmet restaurant after you drop me at school. You’ll have eggs Benedict and croissants. This whole granola bar runaround is just a scam.

      My secret’s out. Robin sat down at the table. Get all your homework done?

      "Yeah, it was easy. Just had to write a report on Catcher in the Rye."

      Thumbs-up or -down?

      The book was okay. I couldn’t relate to Holden Caulfield as much as I was supposed to.

      Robin took this as a good sign. As I recall, he was a pretty mixed-up young man.

      He’s alienated, I guess. That’s a popular theme, isn’t it?

      Robin made a quick literary survey, from The Odyssey to Hamlet to every modern book, movie, and TV series about suburban angst and disaffected youth. Always.

      Hey, didn’t they used to call people in your line of work alienists?

      Way back when. The term referred to Freudian psychoanalysts more than to us cognitive-behavioral types.

      Meg seemed uninterested in the distinction. Alienation, she said a little too casually. That’s a bad thing, isn’t it? To be cut off from society?

      Robin eyed her with suspicion. I have a feeling you’re going somewhere with this.

      Not really. It’s just that, well, people who go to an exclusive private school are kind of alienated, wouldn’t you say?

      Nice try.

      Meg wouldn’t be deterred so easily. The uniform alone is enough to make you feel alienated. She plucked at the white blouse. No normal person dresses like this.

      You’re a perfectly normal person. And Gainesburg is a perfectly normal high school. Not to mention one of the best schools in the city.

      There are plenty of good public schools. Magnet schools. They take the best and the brightest. Namely me.

      The Gainesburg School also takes the best and the brightest.

      They take anyone who can afford the tuition. Speaking of which, how do we afford it, anyway?

      I sneak out at night and sell my body on Hollywood Boulevard.

      LA psychiatrist by day, Hollywood hooker by night. See, if I went to public school, you could give up your sordid double life.

      Is wearing a uniform really that onerous?

      It’s not just the uniform. It’s the whole Gainesburg atmosphere. It’s, like, a whole different world. Not part of the city at all.

      That’s the idea.

      It feels isolated.

      It’s supposed to feel isolated. The whole point of going there is to be isolated.

      So alienation is bad, but isolation is good?

      Robin sighed. Teenage sophistry was a powerful thing. It depends on what you’re being isolated from. In this case, yes, it’s good.

      Why? What’s so scary out there?

      Do you ever read the newspaper?

      Do you?

      I would if I had more time. And if I did, I would read about gang shootings, drug overdoses, teenage pregnancies—

      I’m not going to get pregnant or take drugs just because I go to a public school. You don’t trust me. That’s what this is really all about.

      Meg, you’ll have a better chance of getting into a good college if you have Gainesburg on your application.

      I’ll get into a good college anyway.

      You have friends at Gainesburg.

      I can make friends anyplace. Will you at least consider a magnet school?

      It would be easy to lie and put the issue to rest, at least temporarily. But Robin made a conscious effort never to lie to her daughter. She had not lied during the divorce or the painful months of relocation and readjustment that followed, and she wouldn’t start now.

      I feel better having you in Gainesburg, she said. Sorry.

      It’s for my own good, right?

      Partly. It’s also for my own good. My peace of mind.

      Meg showed a sly smile. You know, even Gainesburg students get into trouble sometimes.

      But you won’t. Will you?

      She deflated. I’ll never get the chance.

      That’s the way I like it, Robin thought. Get your book-bag, and I’ll set the alarm.

      Their two-story, three-bedroom condo had come equipped with a security system, a major selling point in Robin’s estimation. Meg chided her for her obsession with the alarm, but Robin was taking no chances.

      West Los Angeles was a safe neighborhood by local standards, but within the last month there had been a break-in down the street, an armed robbery at a jewelry store two blocks away, and shots fired from a moving car on a Saturday night.

      It wasn’t that safe, no matter what people believed.

      No place in this city was safe.

      * * *

      That thought stayed with Robin as she picked up Meg’s friend Jamie, who carpooled with Meg, then drove them both to the private school on Barrington Avenue. She waved good-bye and hit the freeway, her Saab speeding east toward downtown, the CD player on. The disk on the tray was Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 4, the rich tones pumping through the dashboard speakers.

      She wondered if she was too hard on Meg. But exiting the freeway, entering the wasteland of a burned-out neighborhood, she saw the ugliness and desperation of the city. It might seem exotic to her daughter, like the backdrop to a music video on MTV, but there was nothing exotic about drive-bys and drug deals. Nothing exotic about the patients she treated or their life stories, many of which had gone wrong in their teenage years when they’d fallen in with bad company and started making bad choices. She intended to shield Meg from that. And if her daughter thought she was overprotective … well, too bad.

      Although the day was mild, with highs expected only in the seventies—seasonable for LA in the middle of May—she kept her windows up, the AC on. The closed windows, like the enveloping cocoon of music, were her way of holding the outside world at bay.

      She had spent the last two years in Los Angeles, a city of transients, a place of people lingering nowhere, always on the move. But in the neighborhoods around her now, there was no place to go. The people here were transients who stayed put, or maybe it would be less paradoxical to say that their travels had been circumscribed by the narrow dimensions of their lives—from slum apartment to prison cell, from motel room to abortion clinic, from desolation to degradation. There were people here, less than twenty miles inland, who had never seen the ocean. There were people here, a bus ride away from downtown LA and one of the largest public libraries in the country, who had never read a book.

      She passed from the remains of a residential district into an industrial section, largely deserted, the businesses gone. Around her stood bleak commercial structures—warehouses and windowless brick buildings bearing faded signs with words like Packing and Processing.

      Idling at a stoplight, she noticed two teenagers staring at her from a street corner. She’d seen hundreds of young men like them on the streets of LA. Even the details were familiar—the baseball caps pulled low over their foreheads, the black sweatshirts, the oversize baggy pants. Every day, after leaving the comparative safety of the freeway, she drove past these young men or others like them. It wasn’t just this part of town. They were everywhere in this city.

      She looked away, afraid that her gaze might be misconstrued as a challenge. The music continued, but she couldn’t focus on it—not when her first session with Alan Brand was scheduled for one o’clock. It was an appointment she’d been anticipating all week, ever since she’d received the go-ahead from Deputy Chief Wagner, her liaison with the LAPD.

      She remembered Wagner asking why she was so gung ho to poke around in a cop’s psyche.

      What I’m gung ho about, she’d explained, is the chance to show how effective my method of treatment can be. But I need a more diverse pool of patients than the inmates of the county jail.

      It hadn’t been easy to get the LAPD on board. She had put months of effort into securing a police officer as a patient, invested hundreds of hours in writing and rewriting proposals, meeting with the police brass, working her way through the tiers of bureaucracy. She had lost nights and weekends. She had lost sleep.

      And now everything was signed and delivered, and she finally had the approval she needed. She had permission to use one police officer, just one, as a test subject. If she didn’t get results with Sergeant Brand, she wouldn’t be given a second chance. So she would get results, starting today.

      It was taking a long time for the light to change. Maybe she should just run the red. The intersection was empty of traffic. She didn’t like to break the law, but—

      A heavy thump, a crunching sound.

      Glass pellets sprayed her lap.

      She whirled in her seat in time to see the crowbar’s second impact against the window on the driver’s side. The remaining fringe of safety glass was swept away in a shower of glittering crumbs, and then a hand reached through the window frame and unlocked the door.

      It was the two young men she’d seen a moment ago. The nearer one had the crowbar.

      The CD kept playing, the concerto bursting from the speakers.

      A sharp rap on the windshield. Her eyes cut in the direction of the noise. She saw a gun, a large steel-frame pistol, held sideways, movie-style.

      Outta the car, bitch! the one with the crowbar screamed over the music.

      His voice was higher than she’d expected, almost a girl’s voice. Distantly she wondered how young he really was.

      Okay, she said. You can have it. You can have the car.

      "Get out!"

      I am. But she wasn’t, because she couldn’t seem to unhook her seat belt, couldn’t get her shaking fingers around the buckle.

      "Get the fuck out!"

      Finally she popped open the buckle, and the lap belt and shoulder belt slid away, freeing her.

      I’m coming, she said, I’m coming.

      Something hit the windshield. The spot in front of her face shivered into a meshwork of fractures, bending inward but not crumbling, held in place by the thin layer of plastic embedded in the safety glass.

      It was the second thug, the one with the pistol. He’d delivered a hard swat to the glass with the gun barrel.

      The first one grabbed her by the shoulder, hauled her out of her seat. She looked into his face, his eyes. Wild eyes—he was high on something—pupils dilated, the whites bloodshot.

      His voice was a whisper. Gonna mess you up, kitty cat.

      In that moment she knew they didn’t want only the car. They wanted her. They were going to hurt her, kill her.

      She bent her left leg at the knee and kicked at the one with the crowbar, catching him in the stomach, surprising him. He let go of her, and she ducked back into her seat, bending low, and slammed her foot on the gas.

      There was another smack against the windshield—the assailant with the gun must have hit it again—and then the Saab’s front end thudded into him and knocked him reeling. She powered forward while a nasty scraping noise rasped along the rear of the car.

      The intersection was still empty of traffic. She tore through it and around the corner, slamming the door shut as she took the turn, keeping her head down out of some unsuspected combat instinct. A block away she cut into the parking lot behind the building where she worked, pulling alongside a huge sport-utility vehicle that concealed her from the street. With a shaking hand she shut off the CD player.

      There was a cell phone in her purse. She ought to call the police. But she couldn’t do it right now. She had to know if they were still after her.

      They had been out for blood. That was certain. Any possible doubt had been removed by that second impact to the windshield. It had not been another strike by a blunt object. It had been a gunshot, one that had punctured the glass with a neat round hole, surprisingly small. The bullet itself was lodged in the headrest of the driver’s seat. If she hadn’t ducked …

      But you did, she told herself. So it’s okay.

      A lie. There was nothing okay about any of this. Since when had a morning drive to work become an exercise in survival?

      She waited another couple of minutes, the Saab’s engine idling, gearshift thrown into reverse. If the two men—boys, they were boys—appeared, she was ready to back out of the parking space at top speed.

      But they hadn’t pursued her. How could they, when they were on foot? They had no way of knowing where she worked, no way of knowing she was still in the neighborhood. They had given up on her, moved on to another victim, easier prey.

      She shut off the engine and got out of the car. Her knees briefly failed, and she had to lean against the open door. The scraping noise she’d heard as she sped away had been the sound of the crowbar leaving a long, ugly groove in the trunk lid. A parting gift from the lead attacker.

      Gonna mess you up, kitty cat.

      She could ask the obvious question—Why me?—but she already knew the equally obvious answer. There was nothing personal about it. She was not any special target. They had simply spotted her, a woman alone in an expensive car, a Saab 9-5 sedan, and they’d decided to make their move. They would have beaten her or raped her or killed her because she had money and they didn’t, or because she took too long to comply with their orders, or because it would be fun.

      Just kids. Two of them. How many more were out there? And how many other kids, a few years younger, would be following in their footsteps?

      You can’t save the world, Robin, her mother used to say.

      She had always answered, You can try.

      She restarted her car and parked in her reserved space. When she was ready, she took the cell phone from her purse and called 911.

      2

      During the next hour, two squad cars patrolled the neighborhood in search of young males matching the descriptions she’d given the 911 operator, while a third patrol unit was dispatched to take her statement and examine the Saab. One officer took photos of the damage with a pocket camera. His partner dug the expended round out of the headrest and bagged it as evidence.

      Shouldn’t a forensics team do that? Robin asked.

      Both cops looked at her as if she’d been watching too many crime dramas on TV. They were in their late twenties, a decade younger than she was, trim and tanned with buzz-cut hair and dark glasses.

      Dr. Cameron, the first cop said, there are two or three hundred incidents per day in this division. If we brought out the crime-scene guys for every violent crime, they’d never get anything done.

      This isn’t just any violent crime. It’s attempted murder.

      Just be glad it was an unsuccessful attempt. You know, it’s not worth losing your life to protect your vehicle.

      I told you, I was trying to cooperate, but they didn’t give me enough time. I think they were on something. Amphetamines or cocaine.

      Unfortunately most of the lowlifes around here are high most of the time, so that doesn’t exactly narrow it down.

      If you want my advice, the second cop added, "move your office to a better neighborhood. You’re

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1